The present invention relates to hockey pucks. It finds particular application in conjunction with street or roller hockey pucks, and will be described with particular reference thereto. However, it is to be appreciated that the present invention is also amenable to other like applications.
In recent years the sport of street or roller hockey has increased in popularity due to the advent of the roller blade or in-line skate. The skate itself feels more like an ice skate then a roller skate. Likewise, for street hockey, a puck is desired which travels and/or otherwise performs on asphalt, concrete, or other like playing surface as if it were on ice, i.e., gliding or sliding smoothly.
Typically, in street hockey, the playing surface is rough, unlike ice hockey where you have a lower coefficient of friction. These rough playing surfaces tend to cause conventional pucks to act erratically forcing the puck to flip and/or roll on its outer edge. These are undesirable results.
There have been pucks designed to address the problem of puck performance. While some of the prior designs have worked better than others, all of the previously designed pucks have, due to their hardness and/or inflexibility, a tendency to injure players or spectators when struck therewith. A rigid or hard puck is unable to sufficiently absorb the shock upon impact with a player and/or spectator. Accordingly, a large portion of the force upon impact is delivered to the individual struck.
In addition to being constructed of hard polymers, several pucks employ rolling parts such as wheels, spheres, ball bearing, etc. on which the puck travels over the playing surface. These rolling features change the nature of the puck's performance or play from gliding or sliding across the playing surface to rolling across the playing surface thereby reducing the ice hockey feel. Moreover, a common problem associated with these designs is that the wheels or rolling parts are jammed or clogged during play by debris getting caught between the rolling parts and the body of the puck. When this happens, the puck no longer travels across the playing surface freely.
Other previous puck designs employ skids or runners on which the pucks are able to glide or slide across the playing surface. With reference to FIGS. 1A through 1C, a prior art skid assembly 10 for use with a street hockey puck is shown. It includes a top skid 10a and a bottom skid 1b which sit proud of a top surface 20a and a bottom surface 2b of a main body 20. Typically, the main body 20 is cylindrical in form and a plurality of skid assemblies 10 are installed around it's circumference at it's periphery. As best seen in FIGS. 1B and 1C, the skid assemblies 10 are installed via opposing solid pins 12 and hollow pin-receiving housings 14 which are integral with the skids 10a and 10b and that extend longitudinally through the main body 20.
As shown in FIG. 1C, these types of skid assemblies 10 are not optimal insomuch as the relatively thin walls of the hollow pin-receiving housings 14 tend to develop cracks 16 under the extreme impacts experienced by the puck during play. Additionally, during it's use, the skids 10a and 10b on the puck wear down through repeated sliding contact and friction with the playing surface. In these pucks, there is no way to readily measure the amount of wear on the skids 10a and 10b, or determine when a skid should be replaced. Accordingly, play tends to continue with a puck having overly worn skids that are less than optimal. Such worn skids in turn allow the body 20 of the puck to more readily catch on the playing surface causing the puck to flip and/or lose momentum.
The present invention contemplates a new and improved street hockey puck which overcomes the above-referenced problems and others.